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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Barastrondo" data-source="post: 5402930" data-attributes="member: 3820">It's not a truism, and it's not even what I said. Players who won't think to be funny without mechanical encouragement, sure, you can't leave it to them to be whimsical. But if you play with players who don't need mechanical encouragement, then they will be funny with or without it, read the context of the situation more accurately, and know the kind of behavior that entertains the group better than an author who's never met them will. For those reasons I find rules-whimsy less effective overall, and therefore not as important.Let me make it perfectly clear that I am not saying that whimsy-by-mechanical-design is a bad thing, and that nobody should use it! I'm just saying that for the right group, it's unnecessary, particularly if some of the members aren't that in tune with the author's sense of humor.Well, here's the thing: If the "trip over your scabbard" joke is fresh and hilarious each time it comes up, it's because the players have interpreted it in different fashions each time. Yet if they're creative enough to do that, then the virtue is not resting with "31-33: You trip over your scabbard." It's resting with creative players who remember the last time this happened, and do something different with it for variety's sake. The table won't remember the last time it happened, and neither will the dice. They're not that smart (player accusations that my dice are both smart and malevolent to the contrary).I fear you don't know my players very well, sir. Certainly they fail to interpret the game world in terms of their powers: they're pretty hip to the idea of rules as a means to arbitrate specific interactions rather than physical constants. They also have this tendency to act as though whimsy is a rules-agnostic element. The socially inept wizard goes off on a comical tirade when an appropriate conversational opening presents itself. The Librarian develops a deep-seated fear of being devoured not because of a psychological chart, but because the player thinks it would be funny for him to flinch at the mention of giant frogs like the ones that almost got him.I'm trying pretty hard to imagine a gaming group that doesn't crack jokes because there are no in-jokes in the ruleset, and... yeah, it's pretty hard for me. In the first Vampire game I ever played, one of my friends created the vampirized Jim Henson and built a robot "Kerminator." In my experience, the group chemistry will always trump whatever the ruleset says. They may play in perfect accordance with a theme as written, of course -- but it's because they choose to.Well, humor's essentially subjective. My wife, who laughs her head off at the latest rant of the Ezio Auditore-meets-Bertie Wooster rogue, or at the gesticulations that describe the hunting behavior of the rhinostirge, would just roll her eyes at the +2 Backbiter and say "Man, another stupid screw-the-players inclusion. Did a player eat the last nacho or something?" She prefers conversational wit to slapstick, and conversational wit is not something game books often do very well. They can only dictate; you can't have a back-and-forth with them. So our fellow players are far more successful in that regard.</blockquote>

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